He micro. I think I remember you from the, well, micro forum maybe? I started out my 2p2 "career" there. I've seen you post somewhere.

Anyway, thanks

I shot myself once. Not bad. I was holding the other side of the board and the nail went through and hit me. Wasn't horrible but wasn't nice either.

That new Hitachi has some sort of different safety mechanism. It's like if you don't set it down right and jiggles or something you have to lift it up and set it down again.

Here's some pics of my service panel. I couldn't get it all in one shot so I went from the bottom up.

I was interested in the breakers and the label, but that's pretty obviously a 200 amp and from weird part of the country (not SoCal) where the meter housing is usually separate. I was just going to suggest upgrading if they were moving a 100 amp service.

I don't think I ever posted in the micro forum. My main home has always been STTF, but I post in OOT a fair amount too.

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re: your plumbing and door problems: This is probably the type of thing that keeps me broke, but on the rare occasions we've damaged something I got someone to fix it and had it done by the next day at the latest.

I think I'm gonna have a lot to say to this guy when everything is done. And, I'll be writing it all up on Angie's list. That's his big advertising ploy - his rating on Angie's list.

If you remember, keep us posted on this. I assume Angie's list is a total scam and he pays a fee and bad rating might not stick around too long. I know the BBB is crap and constantly calls businesses - it's practically extortion.

I was interested in the breakers and the label, but that's pretty obviously a 200 amp and from weird part of the country (not SoCal) where the meter housing is usually separate. I was just going to suggest upgrading if they were moving a 100 amp service.

Yeah, the electric is relatively new. About 10 years ago I started this remodel project. I gutted the house and started fresh with plumbing and electric. I did all the electric work (and incoming plumbing) myself except installing the service panel. I did wire everything to the panel, though.

I can't really do much to the house right now because the foundation guys still have to pour 6 piers. It rained pretty hard here and the ground is still soaked (but the roof didn't leak!!!!!). So, no telling when they will finish up.

So, I decided to do a little painting. By the way, painting is definitely my least favorite house thing to do. I absolutely hate it. Anyways, I wanted to paint the fascia before I put the gutters up. And, I figured get started painting the garage as well since I'm going to re-paint it to match.

Needed a power washer to clean the garage, though. Up above the power washers were a lot of symbols indicating which power washer could do which job well. Things like pictures of a deck or a lawn chair or whatever you might clean. The picture of the house was red above the cheapest power washer (electric). I dunno, I had a cheap one before and it was fine. The ones they recommend for houses are all gas powered and I really don't want one of those. I bought the cheap one.

It did the job just fine.

I didn't wash all the garage - just the soffit and fascia. And, I painted the fascia on the house. Both, are probably gonna need 2 coats.

First time in a while I've accomplished what I wanted to accomplish for a day.

Here's a pic of the garage before I paint it.

Here's the front and the back of the house after the fascia has been painted.

I've been sort of hating on the foundation guy just because I need to hate on someone about it.

When I talked to him last week, he indicated that I would need 8 more piers. Additionally, he added $640 worth of beam replacement for that garage area. This was all needed of course by my brain could only think "this is 50% MORE than the original estimate and I'm on a budget".

He called me this morning at work and said he had sent the new estimate to my home email address.

So, while I'm at the gym I'm obsessing over this and then it hit me. His original estimate had him sinking steel piers under the slab to hold the slab up. But, since the slab wasn't holding anything up, he isn't doing it. That was a pretty sizeable part of the estimate.

When I got home the estimate was not in my inbox so I called him to get him to send it to me and to discuss the fact that he didn't do the original slab work. Well, he took it off the estimate. The final bill came in about $900 more than the original estimate. I really can't complain about this at all. Considering the mess they had and the fact they had to jackhammer a bunch of slab and they did some nice carpentry work that he barely charged me for and some other things. Even if he did break my pipes.

Not much to report. It's the calm before the storm - literally and figuratively. A lot of rain is heading this way so I didn't want to get to far into anything. Just doing some prep work for the big siding tearoff.

So, I've been doing a little pre-tearoff work. I "finished" the gutter on the back of the house. I learned that gutter sealer sticks quite well to everything except gutter. Ended up just using silicon caulk. We'll see how good my job was this afternoon. One problem is the roofline isn't straight so the gutter comes out about 1/4" on one end. Bugging the hell out of me. I'll probably just screw it down tight against the fascia and caulk the screws. Or leave it and hope I can ignore it.

The deck is bolted to the house. Unfortunately, it is over the wood siding. I think the wood siding is so rotten that I can just get rid of the part that is above the deck joist and flash it properly. There will be some leftover rotten siding between the deck and the house but oh well. I really really really don't want to take the deck apart.

Here's a pic. And, here's a pic of the corner post of the deck. Remember, they raised the house and the deck went with it. Before anyone says anything, the vast majority of the deck sits on concrete piers, not those concrete blocks. I just couldn't dig a hole right there.

Here's my french door. Notice at the top there is a big gap between the doors. The picture magnifies it, it's not as horrible as it looks - but still not right. It appears the left door isn't hung quite right. Needs to go out on the top? However....... It is dragging at the bottom and doesn't close smoothly. Not horribly but it bugs me. I could probably remove the weatherstripping but I don't want to. And, it drags on the floor a little. Possible the weatherstripping is just messed up.

Other than the drag, the doors close OK.

I just don't know how to fix this. If I bring the left top out some, I'll fix that gap but won't that make the bottom even stickier?

I think the right side is OK - maybe? I don't open that side.

Oh, and what appears to be wood rot isn't near as bad as it looks. The wood is fine, it's more of a stain really.

Water is coming down where I snipped the drip edge to put the hangers. That means water is hugging the shingles/fascia. Not really a problem - easily caulked. I'm glad now I slipped the gutters under the drip edge.

I think your door needs to go up on the left first so you have room to close the gap without the bottom dragging. Either the door or the floor isn't level. Maybe both. If you're replacing it, shim up the new one on that side. Yeah, that means you'll have a gap to fill/caulk/something on the bottom. Hopefully the header is high enough, too.

My father installed blinds-between-the-glass doors in the early 80's. They worked fine for about 15 years. Then they went to ****.

Thanks JD! Glad you found this. I'll pop into POG from time to time. Might even get a game of WW in if I ever have time.

I went ahead and bought some new french doors. They didn't cost all that much considering. And, they will be able to ship it with my hardie delivery. And, since I'm getting some labor for the great siding tearoff, I'll have some help hanging them. And, the price wasn't horrible. I just figured why not. Got the ones with the blinds inside. The doors face west and the sun gets pretty brutal parts of the year.